Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Potentially more expense.

So, of course, having bought the flipping tape adaptor, my mp3 player has now decided to end its useful life as a provider of sound. It still works; however, the key component which makes it so good for in-car use has quit on me, leaving it useless for the car and highly inconvenient everywhere else. I might be able to get a replacement, if it's a problem with the plug-in component, but that's a $50 investment and the problem could well be elsewhere. I've not given up hope yet, but frankly it's probably done for as a music player. It'll make a reasonable portable drive, if I want to, but its musical days are likely over.

This means I want a new one. Now, I do need to specify feature lists here; I'm going to do so RFC-style.MUST support OGG Vorbis, FLAC, MPEG-1 layer 3 out of the box. (mp3 is standard, but OGG and FLAC are rare)MUST be operable to a basic level (playing, pausing, skipping etc) without visual feedback. (I need to be able to control it without looking)MUST support playlists. (needing to be connected to a computer to make playlists is fine, but it needs to be able to support them)MUST have a storage capacity of 20 decimal gigabytes or greater. (that's marketing gigabytes)MUST output through standard 3.5mm headphone jack.MUST work with Mac OSX, Windows XP, and Linux. (this pretty much means it should appear to the computer as a USB hard drive)SHOULD be operable from an inline remote control. (this is something the old one does/did, and I like it a lot, but I'm willing to compromise)SHOULD be directly connectable to a computer and/or a charger without extra components (something that was a niggle with the old one; it needed a breakout box)SHOULD have a battery life of 14 hours or greater.MAY support video and photos. (I don't want such, but good luck finding anything that doesn't)MAY use Flash or hard disk for storage.MUST NOT break the bank balance.

I'm frankly open to suggestions. It's four years since I bought something like this, I don't know what's on the market now.